Dissecting Slashers - Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Time will mend your broken heart, just don't fall apart.

BACKGROUND 

If you walked into a video store in the 1980s, chances are you’d have a plethora of campsite slasher movies to choose from. Yes, there were so many of them, I have to use the word plethora. Of course, many of them would be entries in the popular Friday the 13th franchise, but there were also a ton of camp slashers that didn’t get sequels. Some of these standalone slashers became cult classics. The Burning, Madman, Just Before Dawn, The Final Terror. Others are more obscure. Some have been largely forgotten over time. There was The Forest, The Prey, Moonstalker, Berserker, Body Count, Cheerleader Camp, Don’t Go in the Woods Alone! With so many camp slashers to choose from, a film really had to be something special to stand out from the pack. Writer/director Robert Hiltzik’s 1983 camp slasher Sleepaway Camp was something special. It delivered the murder and mayhem viewers went in expecting, then it lodged itself in their minds with an ending no one saw coming. Unlike most of the other slashers of the time, it managed to spawn a franchise, giving the horror genre a new icon. 

Horror has long been seen as a stepping stone genre. A lot of filmmakers make their feature debut with a low budget horror movie, the idea being that there will be a good return on investment, opening the door for them to be able to follow it up with something bigger. This approach to breaking into the film industry has resulted in some massive success stories. Sam Raimi went from The Evil Dead to Spider-Man. Peter Jackson went from Bad Taste to The Lord of the Rings. James Wan went from Saw to Aquaman. Robert Hiltzik didn’t have the same sort of career trajectory as those guys did, but he got started in the same way. 

Hiltzik was a grad student at NYU with dreams of getting into filmmaking when he had the idea for Sleepaway Camp. He wanted to make something that would be inexpensive, easy to market, and would take place primarily in just one location. So making a campground slasher was the obvious choice, especially since he had grown up going to a summer camp called Camp Algonquin in Argyle, New York. He has admitted that horror movies aren’t his top choice when he goes out to watch a movie, but horror was the most promising way to get his directing career started.

He raised a budget of $350,000 and put together a five-week shooting schedule that would last from September through October 1982. Which is why, in some shots, you can see fall leaves on the trees at the summer camp in his movie. He also drew up extensive storyboards, but after the first day of shooting, he had already fallen a day behind schedule, so the storyboards had to be set aside. But the shoot never fell any further behind schedule.

SETTING

While writing the script, Hiltzik envisioned the camp he knew from childhood: Camp Algonquin. He had no idea whether or not he would actually get to film there. But when he presented the idea of making a movie on the camp property during the off-season, the owner gave him the okay. It didn’t even matter what kind of movie he was going to make. So what if it was going to be about campers and counselors being brutally murdered? Charging the production a small fee to film there was just a way to make some extra cash during the camp’s downtime. Sadly, since the filming of Sleepaway Camp, Camp Algonquin has closed down and the cabins have been demolished. Houses and camper trailers now sit on the property. The only remnants of the camp are the tennis and basketball courts. But in the early ‘80s, it made for a great filming location.

As picturesque as it is, Camp Arawak doesn’t seem like a nice place to be. Especially when people start dropping dead at a steady pace. But the cast and crew had a great time there during filming. The production was sort of like a five-week camping trip. Parents dropped their kids off at the set and trusted Hiltzik to take care of them. Between shots, the kids had fun hanging out and playing at the campground. 

KILLER

A lot of slashers begin with a scene set years before the events that follow, and Sleepaway Camp is no different. Hiltzik had the opening scene of the film in mind from the start. We see a man hanging out on a lake with his young children, a son and a daughter. Then their peaceful afternoon takes a nightmarish turn when some dimwitted teens in a speedboat crash into the family. It’s tragic. It’s disturbing. It’s a great way to get a horror movie started.

Eight years after the boating accident, we find the surviving child has been taken in by their Aunt Martha, a woman who is apparently a doctor, even though she appears to have some serious mental issues. Martha (Desiree Gould, going way over the top with her performance) sends her son Ricky (played by Jonathan Tiersten) and his cousin Angela (Felissa Rose) off to camp after making them promise not to tell anyone how they got the results of their physical exams. That’s odd, but we move right along. And discover that camp life is not all that pleasant. And soon enough, the people who get on Angela and Ricky’s bad side start getting killed or horrifically injured.

Now we have to get into spoiler territory. It’s impossible to talk about Sleepaway Camp without addressing who the killer is, which isn’t revealed until the ending. Up to that point, the film plays as a mystery. Who is the killer? The main suspect is Angela’s intensely protective cousin Ricky, who is hilarious high-strung and foul-mouthed, flying into a rage the second he sees anyone mistreating his cousin. But in the end, Angela is revealed to be the killer.

Felissa Rose’s parents agreed to let her be involved as long as she didn’t have to get naked or be shown killing anybody. She wasn’t directly involved with the filming of any of the death scenes. When we see the killer’s hands, those are Tiersten’s hands. It was fine that Rose’s parents didn’t want their daughter to do the killing, because the director wanted to throw the viewer off by showing more masculine hands anyway. And when we see the silhouette of the killer standing in a doorway during one scene, that’s also Tiersten.

Flashbacks are used to help us understand exactly what’s going on with Angela. It was the little boy who survived the family boating accident at the beginning – not the girl, as we’ve been assuming. But crazy Aunt Martha already had a son, Ricky, and wanted a daughter. So she decided to raise little Peter Baker as a girl. Angela.

In the years since the release of Sleepaway Camp, some have labeled the film as being transphobic. There are fans in the trans community who stand up for it because, although the character is nude during the identity reveal, the horror of this moment isn’t that Angela has a penis. It’s that Aunt Martha is such an unfit caregiver that she raised Angela to be someone other than herself. It was Aunt Martha who made Peter a girl, told the boy to hide his own identity, to be ashamed of his own body. This is why Angela is so meek and quiet. Why she doesn’t swim with the other girls, why she showers at a different time, why she doesn’t participate when they play sports. Every day, she has to work to hide her true self. Because Aunt Martha made her do this. Being forced to bottle up everything has made Angela unbalanced herself. And homicidal. 

The reveal could have been handled more delicately. The ‘80s were not a delicate time. And the extra element of Peter and Angela having a gay father probably wasn’t necessary to the set-up. But I don't read Sleepaway Camp as being a transphobic film. Aunt Martha is the true villain in this story.

The identity of the adult male who played the nude Angela (while wearing a Felissa Rose mask) has never been revealed. It has been said that he had to get drunk to work up the courage to do the nude scene, so it’s no surprise we don’t see him on the convention circuit. But whoever it was, they worked alongside Hiltzik, Rose, and Tiersten to create an icon: Angela Baker. Her name might not be as well-known as the likes of Jason, Michael, Freddy, or Leatherface, but she did slash her way through multiple movies. 

FINAL GIRL

Angela is the killer, but she’s also the final girl.

She has trouble adjusting to her time at camp. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t eat, and this doesn’t sit well with most of her peers, so they start picking on her. Leaving Ricky to angrily stand up for her on multiple occasions. Angela is able to make a connection with fellow camper Paul, but that just makes her the target of more bullying.

The viewer comes to care about Angela while watching her get picked on simply for being quiet. We cheer for Ricky when he stands up for her, even if he does need to chill a little. It’s nice to see her come out of her shell while interacting with Paul. And then everything comes crashing down.

Felissa Rose would still be considered a genre icon today even if she hadn’t made any other movies, that’s how impactful her performance as Angela is… especially when coupled with that ending.

VICTIMS

Camp Arawak is populated by some very questionable characters. 

There’s camp owner Mel (Mike Kellin), with an old man look and knee-high black socks that make him irresistible to bitchy teenage counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi). As the body count climbs higher, Mel starts worrying about the camp getting bad publicity.

There’s head counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo), who wears such short shorts he might as well just go around in a Speedo. There’s the pedophile head chef Artie (Owen Hughes), and cook Ben (Robert Earl Jones – the father of James Earl Jones!), who brushes off Artie’s disgusting comments. 

The kids are almost all foul-mouthed brats who tend to be awful to each other. And the worst of the bunch is Angela’s bunkmate Judy, a bully for the mean girl record books. Hiltzik wanted to cast a blonde as Judy and nearly gave the role to Jane Krakowski, who would be seen in National Lampoon's Vacation this same year and is now best known for her work on 30 Rock, Ally McBeal, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. But in the end, he decided to cast the brunette Karen Fields, who made sure Judy became a girl nightmares are made of.

Most productions would have cast older actors to play the younger characters; a way to get around child labor laws. Hiltzik wasn’t interested in doing that. He wanted his kid characters to be played by actual kids, and he did a good job of finding the right actors for the roles, regardless of age.

Christopher Collet as Angela’s sweet-but-flawed love interest Paul, and I have to give a nod to Allen Breton, who plays Frank the Cop, a character who has to stop by the camp a couple of times. Breton shaved his mustache between scenes, so toward the end of the movie, he has a very unconvincing fake ‘stache.

DEATHS

The kills in Sleepaway Camp are satisfying and often disturbing. We rarely see the killing blows being delivered, but unlike the censorship some Friday the 13th movies had to endure, this wasn’t a ratings board decision. This was by design.

As makeup artist Ed French told Fangoria magazine, “If we were to shoot things in the straightforward way that they're usually done, then my work would get cut. The film would be edited, and nobody would be getting any entertainment value out of it. Still, the payoff on these murders is seeing something terrible happen. You won't necessarily lose your popcorn, but we did manage to portray a number of terrible things happening.”

The approach worked, and there's a nice variety to the way people get offed in this movie. One is doused with boiling water. Another is drowned. One is stung by bees. And, of course, some of them get slashed. When Angela is revealed to be the killer in the final moments, she has the severed head of a victim at her feet.

French was especially proud of the scene where we see an arrow get shot through someone’s throat when they’re in the middle of speaking.

French was also tasked with making the final shot work. The one where we see a nude Angela standing on the beach and everyone is shocked to see that she has a penis. To accomplish this, Hiltzik had to find a young man with a build small enough to believably double for Rose. He had to be at least eighteen, to legally do the nude scene, but he also had to have a narrow enough face to be able to wear a mask of Rose’s face. The mask was made from a mold that French took of Rose's face with her mouth wide open, so Rose also had to hold her mouth open for the close-ups of her that were edited into the sequence. It’s an unforgettable sight – and to this day, Rose will hold her mouth open in the same way when she takes pictures with fans.

CLICHÉS

For clichés, we have the opening tragedy that will eventually lead to a killing spree. There's someone's mental state being destroyed by an overbearing parental figure. The camp owner who's more worried about his business than the fact that people are being killed. And the bullies who spend the entire movie being awful so we can cheer when they get their comeuppance.

We do not, however, get any instances of the typical slasher movie moments where someone gets killed for drinking, doing drugs, or having premarital sex.

POSTMORTEM

Hiltzik also knew exactly how he was going to end the movie when he started writing the script, but it’s a twist that blindsides the audience. It’s shocking. And it’s intercut with shots of a nude, feral Angela to shock us even more. This is an ending that sticks with people for years. Decades. Most horror fans who watch Sleepaway Camp remember the first time they saw that ending.

I certainly do. We ‘80s kids tended to start watching horror at a very young age. So I was probably only about five years old the first time I saw this movie, watching it with my teenage brother. And I remember my brother’s vocal, shocked reaction to the ending. I didn’t even know what was happening in the moment. I was too young to be able to put together all the pieces. My brother had to explain it to me. This made for a very memorable viewing experience. And on our next trip to the video store, we rented Sleepaway Camp 2.

Ed Bilous provided a great score for the film. And then, after Hiltzik has knocked us out of our seats with the ending, we get an awesome closing credits song. “Angela’s Theme”, or “You’re Just What I’ve Been Looking For”, by Frankie Vinci. One of the all-time great horror movie end credits songs, as far as I’m concerned.

Sleepaway Camp had its premiere in New York City on November 18, 1983. Even though it missed Halloween, it was still the top grossing film in New York that weekend. It made its way out to more theatres in ’84 and was very financially successful, drawing in $11 million during its theatrical run.

That was plenty to lead to sequels, with Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 being shot back-to-back… without the involvement of Hiltzik or Rose. But they weren’t done with the concept. Twenty years later, Hiltzik and Rose re-teamed for Return to Sleepaway Camp. A sequel that wasn’t nearly as well received as the original movie, to put it lightly.

As of now, Sleepaway Camp and Return to Sleepaway Camp are the only two movies Hiltzik has ever directed. His follow-up wasn’t so good… but that first movie was great.